Proposal sails through, with one vocal opponent saying gay first cousins do not risk having a child with birth defects
Archived version: https://archive.ph/Ri2sc
I love how the pic for the article is, presumably, a lesbian couple…
Yep, all those hot & steamy incestuous lesbians in Tennessee are about to riot.
Well the bill originally had an exception for all the supposed lesbien cousins. The governor or someone got to get all upset and strike part of the bill. Then go on talk about how bad the gays cousins were for wanting the exception.
I just want to say that I love the gay first cousins argument. It makes sense in a fucked up way, I guess you could make a bill forcing first cousins to be sterilized if they want to marry and get the same end result.
I can’t see how two consenting adults wanting to marry is an issue. Sure, having biological kids born out of incest should be criminalized as that comes under child abuse (going ahead with a pregnancy where the probability of the child having to suffer a birth defect is very high.).
Let’s say I want to marry my first cousin. Both of us are 22 and 24. We are both adults. Why should society get to decide what we can and cannot do? If you say “love is love” and support this bill, you are a hypocrite.
So, accidental pregnancy between consenting adults that took precautions occurs. Is the state requiring a choice between abortion or jail? Just for the woman, or for both? What if the couple disagree on abortion? Still jail for both, or just one?
Hmm, interesting problem where I don’t exactly have a good answer. But I would still support some form of criminalisation. If I fed my 3 year old cocaine while knowing it was cocaine, should I not be jailed for abuse? Is this situation not similar?
No, because feeding a child cocaine isnillegal and reckless. Having protected sex is not.
But deciding to continue with the pregnancy after your protected sex fails is reckless. You know your child is going to have a 50% probability of having severe genetic defects. If you still continue with the pregnancy, it is equivalent to feeding your child cocaine.
In Tennessee abortion is illegal, so they would have no choice but to continue the pregnancy. So, not really an equal comparison, since presumably you have a choice not to feed your child cocaine.
Ahh… Forgot that this story was in shithole Tennessee.
I tend to agree. There’s only minor biological issues with marrying a cousin, around a 3% increase in birth defects if my quick google is correct. It’s only a cascading problem like people expect when it happens over and over in the same family tree… (or should I say family stick?)
Interesting.
Direct family incestuous offspring seems to have a 50% chance of having genetics disorders.
The stuff for first cousins is even more interesting!
In April 2002, the Journal of Genetic Counseling released a report which estimated the average risk of birth defects in a child born of first cousins at 1.1–2.0 percentage points above the average base risk for non-cousin couples of 3%, or about the same as that of any woman over age 40.[218] In terms of mortality, a 1994 study found a mean excess pre-reproductive mortality rate of 4.4%,[219] while another study published in 2009 suggests the rate may be closer to 3.5%.[2] Put differently, a single first-cousin marriage entails a similar increased risk of birth defects and mortality as a woman faces when she gives birth at age 41 rather than at 30.[220]
The above is from Wikipedia.
So basically, banning incestuous childbirth for first cousins is equivalent to banning women from having children when above 41 years old.
What if the cousins are over 40?
They’ll probably need some Viagra.
It’s a multigenerational issue with first cousin marriage. The coefficient of inbreeding increases as generations with repeated first cousin marriage.
Cultures where first cousin marriage is allowed have double the number of babies born with birth defects. They also are thought to have a higher rate of miscarriage.
Some insular small religious groups have an inbreeding coefficient so high that every marriage in the group is the equivalent to that of siblings. A small
having biological kids born out of incest should be criminalized as that comes under child abuse
It’s the same as any other situation where a couple has known genetic traits that make birth defects much more likely. Why should it be criminalized if the parents are related, but not when the parents are unrelated, even though the outcome for the child is the same?
I’m not very confident in answering this, but this is my answer- Knowing that ur kid will have genetic defects is very easy if you know that your partner is your sibling, no? To know the other genetic traits, you would have to consciously conduct genetic tests n stuff. But not so much for incest.
But there are enough situations where it is easily known, even without genetic testing. For example, if a woman gets a child at a comparatively high age, like 40 or so, there is a significantly increased risk of birth defects, comparable to that for pregnancies between first cousins. I’m only talking about those kind of things. Why shouldn’t that be criminalized then, too?
It shouldn’t be. I was referring to direct family incest, where the risk of genetic disorders is 50%.
Well in your original comment you were just talking about “incest” generally, and then going on to mention you marrying your first cousin as a hypothetical example. That made it seem like you would want a child coming out of that relationship to be criminalized, and that’s what I was responding to. For direct siblings it might indeed be another matter.
Yes, in my original comment I did mean that. But one commentator gave the statistics of genetic disorders for kids born out of first cousins. After researching that a little, I changed my mind and wrote about it in a reply to that comment.
Welcome to the 20th century
You do know it’s legal in many other states? Including loads of liberal states? Or were you just taking a dig on Tennessee?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_United_States
Mostly the latter. I like shitting on stereotypes.
It is worth noting that I myself belong to a stereotype in this regard: I’m trash talking a state I’ve never been to, so feel free to reciprocate the shitting.
Better late than never
